non-apa accredited internships: how much do they REALLY limit future career options?

[GradStudent2020]

It looks like 432 applicants were unmatched and 523 were matched to non-accredited positions. That’s .... a lot of applicants that did not match to accredited positions in Phase 1.

That’s higher than I thought. Am I misreading this information?

Match Statistics - 2018 - Phase I

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[WisNeuro]

Well, it probably deserves some caveats. There are not enough accredited spots for total number of applicants. But, these include all of the diploma mill schools, as many of us would argue that there should be an imbalance given the proliferation of diploma mills in conjunction with market saturation and jobs not keeping pace with number of graduates. So, I'd reword psych27's comment to say that it's no longer true for applicants from reputable programs. But, regardless, many schools had a prohibition against applying to unaccredited sites even back when there was a true match crisis.

 

[WisNeuro]

There were 3366 accredited positions, and 3661 applicants who submitted ranks. Difference of 295. Not bad at all given the circumstances.

 

[NotTheHoff]

How does that work, though? I thought that hundreds of students a year go unmatched and therefore go the unaccredited route. Do some programs prevent that? I applied to one APPIC, non-APA internship and as far as I know my program doesn’t explicitly prohibit that.

Some programs indeed only allow students to apply to APA-accredited internships. As I was getting at, some new stringent requirements on accounting for the training students get from non-accredited sites will give programs more paperwork and grunt hours for every student applying to non-accredited sites. For programs that don't want to deal with all that, there's a quick solution.

My program allows students to request to apply to sites that aren't APA accredited. One exception would be for students from Canada who plan to practice in Canada; CPA accreditation is no issue for us. Every once in a while, someone who is geographically restricted gets an exception, but these are restrictions more out of necessity (e.g., student has a child who cannot relocate that year) than desire. "I want to stay local" doesn't cut it.

 

[psych.meout]

There may be more sites than applicants, but hundreds remained unmatched after Phase I last year and hundreds matched to non-accredited sites during Phase I last year. What’s “no longer true”?

There isn't a large imbalance in the number of accredited sites vs total applicants ranking sites. This means that not matching is much more on the students and their programs than ever.

 

[GradStudent2020]

There were 3366 accredited positions, and 3661 applicants who submitted ranks. Difference of 295. Not bad at all given the circumstances.

So 964 out of 3366 applicants remained unmatched or matched to non-accredited internships. That seems high to me, do you think 25% of applicants not landing at APA-accredited sites is right or am I missing something?

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Mediocre programs and up don’t appear to be getting squeezed anymore, as in recent years they have been about to match all of their applicants to APA-acred sites.

During the internship imbalance, it was less certain that all applicants would match, as even good programs would sometimes have a student miss matching to internship. Most programs required their students to only apply to APA-acred internships, which were far fewer 10-12 years ago, so some quality students went unmatched.

Overall, match rates for mediocre programs back then were still 75% and up for APA-acred internship sites, but that was still a scary number bc it delayed completion of training For those in the 25%.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

So 964 out of 3366 applicants remained unmatched or matched to non-accredited internships. That seems high to me, do you think 25% of applicants not landing at APA-accredited sites is right or am I missing something?

Looking at the link, I seem to see that 237 students were matched to non-accredited internships and 432 were unmatched. So of the 3595 folks who participated (i.e., did not withdraw) from the match, that works out to 18.6%. I think the 523 number you found was actually the number of non-accredited positions offered in 2018.

Still, that's a decent number of people. I suspect part of what may have contributed is that applicants of course aren't applying to every single accredited program. So even though the disparity of accredited spots vs. applicants wasn't huge, not all of those applicants are vying for every one of those accredited spots. And because of the overlap in sites to which applicants are likely applying, I'm not surprised to see folks not match in Phase I.

That being said, it does mean that the students who enter Phase II are in a significantly better position than in years past to not only match to any spot, but to match to an accredited spot in particular.

 

[WisNeuro]

So 964 out of 3366 applicants remained unmatched or matched to non-accredited internships. That seems high to me, do you think 25% of applicants not landing at APA-accredited sites is right or am I missing something?

The numbers @AcronymAllergy cited are right. And, judging by the number of graduates from diploma mills, seems about right. That doesn't even take into account people from reputable schools who are applying way too early. Ask anyone here who reviews apps how many applications they toss for being under what is usually a very low bar for clinical hours alone.

 

[GradStudent2020]

The numbers @AcronymAllergy cited are right. And, judging by the number of graduates from diploma mills, seems about right. That doesn't even take into account people from reputable schools who are applying way too early. Ask anyone here who reviews apps how many applications they toss for being under what is usually a very low bar for clinical hours alone.

What would you consider minimum clinical hours to apply for generalist internships?

 

[WisNeuro]

At barest minimum, 400 intervention, 150 assessment. Obviously, if they are aiming for a career in neuro, the assessment number should be quite a bit higher, with some leeway on the intervention hours. But even in the neuro realm, they still need an adequate number of intervention hours.

 

[psych.meout]

What would you consider minimum clinical hours to apply for generalist internships?

To piggyback off of WisNeuro, Time2Track has some stats on students in general at time of internship match and APPIC puts out some general stats as well. You can also look at specific internship sites on the APPIC website. Sites will publish the minimum number of intervention and assessment hours necessary, though I have heard that some sites are flexible in terms of these requirements. Some might not have a hard cutoff and others might let you count hours you accrue after you submit your application in the fall towards the requirement.

 

[WisNeuro]

To piggyback off of WisNeuro, Time2Track has some stats on students in general at time of internship match and APPIC puts out some general stats as well. You can also look at specific internship sites on the APPIC website. Sites will publish the minimum number of intervention and assessment hours necessary, though I have heard that some sites are flexible in terms of these requirements. Some might not have a hard cutoff and others might let you count hours you accrue after you submit your application in the fall towards the requirement.

Definitely varies, but I think the sites that get a lot of applications will use cutoffs more. For example, we get >30 applications for each spot we have on internship. And, our hours cutoffs are pretty low, so if people do not meet this, it's an auto-reject.

 

[GradStudent2020]

To piggyback off of WisNeuro, Time2Track has some stats on students in general at time of internship match and APPIC puts out some general stats as well. You can also look at specific internship sites on the APPIC website. Sites will publish the minimum number of intervention and assessment hours necessary, though I have heard that some sites are flexible in terms of these requirements. Some might not have a hard cutoff and others might let you count hours you accrue after you submit your application in the fall towards the requirement.

I’ve seen all that. It seemed like most cut-offs were below the program requirements for my school, unless it was a highly specialized (neuro) site. The cut-offs varies widely, though. At least at the sites I reviewed.

 

[psych.meout]

I’ve seen all that. It seemed like most cut-offs were below the program requirements for my school, unless it was a highly specialized (neuro) site. The cut-offs varies widely, though. At least at the sites I reviewed.

They're going to vary widely depending on lots of factors. An academic medical center or VA hospital, community mental health, medical practice consortium, university counseling center, etc. each are going to have different requirements and then there are going to be within group differences based on even more factors (e.g., rural vs urban, regional differences).

It might just be better to pick sites in which you are interested and look at their requirements instead of trying to gauge such a diverse field.

 

[GradStudent2020]

They're going to vary widely depending on lots of factors. An academic medical center or VA hospital, community mental health, medical practice consortium, university counseling center, etc. each are going to have different requirements and then there are going to be within group differences based on even more factors (e.g., rural vs urban, regional differences).

It might just be better to pick sites in which you are interested and look at their requirements instead of trying to gauge such a diverse field.

I’m an applicant in the current cycle and have been in the field as Master’s level clinician for several years. I was just curious what posters thought should be the minimum. Just wondering if opinions vary much from the available info provided by APPIC, T2T, individual sites.